To Brand or not to Brand. How Can Branding Make or Break a Company

Unless you live on Mars or in another galaxy, there’s no way you haven’t heard of branding. After all, it’s a centuries old practice (‘though used in a completely different context). Small start-ups tend to neglect its importance, but all the big players on the market know just how much of a difference it can make. Let’s not forget that companies like Coca-Cola, Apple or Google are known all over the world due to their strong branding strategies.

Why should you invest in branding?

You’ve got a company, you have your business connections, you have your loyal customers and everything works just fine. So, why should you spend time and resources to develop a brand?

Well, a brand is more than just a company. It’s not enough to have a small store, to provide quality services and set a fair price for your goods; if you don’t have a strong brand your business can’t grow. You will make sales, you’ll cater to those who already know and trust you, but you won’t reach new audiences, you won’t be able to expand your business. The public needs to know everything about your company so that it can trust it and believe it fits their needs.

Here are eight compelling reasons why you need it:

1. It tells the public who you are

By investing in a branding campaign your target audience will get a chance to know your company better, to know which are your values, what are you offering them, which is your USP, what’s your promise to them.

2. It helps your company connect with your customers

In today’s market, it’s not enough to have outstanding products or services in order to succeed. People need to feel connected to you, they need to identify with your company, they need to know that your values are in compliance with theirs. Through branding, you can let them know that.

3. It lets customers know what to expect

Branding lets the customers know exactly what to expect from your company. Simply put, it helps with your positioning on the market. They will know what kind of business it is, to whom it caters, what it delivers and how it does it.

4. It builds trust in your company

Repeated exposure with a brand builds trust. If your target audience knows who you are and what you stand for, in time they will start to trust you, to believe you are a worthy business partner who fulfills their needs.

5. It helps differentiating yourself from the rest

There’s no greater sin in marketing than failing to differentiate from your competitors. Especially from better known ones. If a customers can’t point which are your strengths, how are your products or services different from those offered by others, they will not buy from you. Why should they? You’re just a small, insignificant fish in a fish bank.

6. It contributes to your company’s recognition

You can develop the perfect product, one that fulfills a stringent need, but, without creating a brand around it, it’s just a product. Nothing more. However, if you have a brand, your company will be better known and your products will be sought out by the market, people will want to buy them, you won’t have to go above and beyond to convince them to do it.

7. It generates referrals

If someone knows and trusts your brand, if he believes it is better than the rest, he will most likely recommend it to others, acting like an unofficial brand ambassador and actively contributing to your company’s growth by bringing in potential new customers.

8. It raises your business value

Branding raises the value of your products. A company that has developed strong roots in a certain field has more leverage and can raise its prices more easily, as the customers will be less reluctant to accept the extra cost, because they know that it’s a worthy investment.

All the best-known companies in the world are known and have their reputation due to their branding campaigns. After all, a company that has a strong brand has a competitive edge over the rest of its competitors. Of course, a brand isn’t built overnight, it takes time to develop it, but, at the end, the effort pays off.

Thanks for posting. I'll not agree that marketing automation has to be expensive. Right now there's quite a lot of tools, like GetResponse, active campaign or mailchimp, that make marketing automation quite affordable for smaller companies. It's pretty much all about testing the tools and see what fits your business and strategy.

Thanks for the answer! That sounds good, even if it is not strictly about Facebook status updates. However, the lack of metrics makes me think that the customers coming directly from Facebook organic post are rather the exception than the rule, i.e. the orders are insignifiant compared to the total orders generated by online marketing and as such, the role of the Facebook website is still PR (maybe not 100%, but 99.98% :) ). I would love to be confuted on this point.

One of our eCommerce clients has monthly customers coming directly from Facebook organic posts. Also, the Facebook ads have very good results in terms of sales.
For our B2B clients, Facebook is a channel that assists the sales... even if there are not direct sales.

"From our results, we know that Facebook status updates can get new customers, not just convince fans that the business has morals and positive values. " - I am curios about the figures behind this statement. Was this a one time status update that brought new customers or does that happen regularly, so that one can really plan (i.e. set goals) a specific number of customers/orders or value of orders generated by status updates?

It is a simple answer and introducing paragraph is covering this: "Does Social Media sell or does it only get people to know your business better? This is a good question. From our experience, Social Media can do both if the job is done well."
PR is producing knowledge value transfer but is not direct selling.
Marketing is producing knowledge and could transform information in money. Marketing is covering PR.
Social Media Management is more than, not only an activity field. Social Media is in the same time a battlefield, a knowledge transfer field, a marketing tool, or a sales remote open agent. But social media could be also education classroom, professional forum, services laboratory, and many, many others.. From this perspective any type of Agency or Job position is using SM for his own purposes.
Inside of any organization there are different jobs who cover SM activities: PR, Marketing, Business Development Board, HR, CRM...
It is a current trend in corporate structure companies to create a special SMM job position affiliated do Mktg and Sales Department.

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